Hot Chip is like telling a joke in the middle of having sex. They’re pure pleasure principle, pop omnivores who come off a little uncomfortable and too self-aware about just how much they like this guy/girl but are so enthusiastic about getting them onto the floor and into bed that it's hard to tell whether they’ve actually got game, are overly seductive, or are just silly at the end of the night. And as allergic as this reviewer often feels toward quirk and bands that pack a thousand hooks and ideas into every song, Made in the Dark got me to take it home despite itself.
The speed with which the album and even the internal flow of the songs shift gears makes it tempting to think the band is trying to be everything to everyone, and probably trying too hard. One friend said this band sounds like Elton John got self-conscious and then got trapped inside a computer. But you also get the sense that they wouldn’t have wanted to make an album in which even just one of these sounds they love wasn’t present. Made in the Dark is the aural equivalent of those old Fruit Roll-Up commercials with a bunch of giddy, saccharine kid-actor inventors. Even when things fall a little flat or get too goofy for words, I’m still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt just to see what kind of machine-churned, reprocessed deliciousness will pop out of the lab next.
The biggest problem a lot of people seem to be having with this album is the band’s constant tendency to second-guess itself and totally throw the switch on a good thing right when it locks into the groove. That’s the big ish with “Shake A Fist,” at least, which could be Such A Good Song! if it didn’t drop into that lamentable, much-lambasted “sounds of the studio” interlude right when it’s commencing liftoff. Elsewhere, the stabs of guitar that open “One Pure Thought” seem disingenuous given how fast the song twists into a stuttering, bubbly New Pop vibe that almost sounds like Boy George could have had a hand in it, but then they come back right away to drive “Hold On” right up along the border of rock music, layering beats almost like The Happy Mondays.
And all of these “almosts” are the really telling part, because Hot Chip sound like such a broad swath of pop music on this album that you can’t quite call them out for biting any single obnoxious influence too much, even when they do get so hyperactive it’s annoying. That’s exactly what turned this reviewer off about Hot Chip's last album, The Warning, until he succumbed to the supremely sleek “Boy From School.” Wasn’t that slick, club-ready sound supposed to turn out to be this band’s meal ticket?
And another contradiction! The best song here is the title track, and it has nothing to do with electronic music whatsoever, but just plaintively rolls along like every other heart-tugging piano-driven slow (tiny?) dancer you’ve ever heard, like an opener for Closing Time-era Tom Waits. Album closer “In The Privacy of Our Love” comes close by pulling the same trick, and even sneaks in a subtle IDM beat below the surface, but “Made In The Dark” takes the prize, tender as a filet mignon on a date you can’t really afford. It makes you want to kick yourself for getting taken yet again by the same old boring-in-theory, fool-me-twice songwriterly legerdemain (or maybe that’s only if you’re an obnoxious, over-intellectualizing online music critic).
Beyond the title track, though, maybe the best song — and the weirdest — is “Wrestlers,” a low-end-heavy electro pop gem that rolls between bouncy, video-game-sounding verses and softly buzzing laptop-in-the-bedroom bridges toasty as an electric blanket. The campy WWF-style subject matter makes for ridiculous lines like “Half nelson, full nelson, Willie Nelson” and “He’s not dressed for the cage,” not to mention the chorus’s thesis statement: “I learned all I know from watching wrestling.” But then, right after “I’ve got a roll of coins/ I’m aiming for your lungs and I will never stop,” the synth-assisted bass drops hard as a Stone Cold Stunner, right under a chorus of warm falsetto “ooh oohs” in harmony — thud, clap, and I’m in love.